Your job is not to fatten geese but to train athletes!” This mandate passed on years ago to a group of Bible teachers is just as relevant to God’s prophets and teachers today. Cramming people with hosts of biblical facts divorced from the hortatory “therefore” cannot produce the victors in life’s race and the stalwart soldiers so desperately needed in the Christian warfare.

When Paul described the Christian’s armor (Eph. 6:10–17), he could not have meant by the sword of the Word of God merely a thorough knowledge of biblical facts, or even an intellectual mastery of systematized doctrines of the faith. Paul, highly educated Hebrew of the Hebrews who from earliest childhood had been thoroughly trained in the law and history of Israel, knew that facts of themselves could fatten but not fortify; and so his appeal was for the believer to take up and put on the whole armor of God, which included, besides the sword of the Word, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sandals of gospel-heralding, and the helmet of salvation.

God chose to reveal himself in a volume of history and doctrine that, by the very magnitude of its scope, inevitably stimulates many readers to attain an encyclopedic knowledge of its contents. But throughout this divine volume God has made it very clear that not facts in isolation but the life, the race, the warfare, as they are energized by the dynamic of the Gospel, are what men are to concern themselves with.

Words Made Alive

Paul’s writings clearly join fact and its application in vital relation. This is seen from the organization of his epistles, in which first the doctrines are asserted (e.g., Eph. 1–3) and then the commands are delivered (e.g., Eph. 4–6). In the 119th (“Word”) Psalm, the psalmist reveals a heart transformed and motivated by an active, put-to-practice Word (e.g., “I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me”—119:93). To Joshua, on the eve of Israel’s entry into the promised land, was given this formula for prosperity and success: (1) “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth”—head knowledge and oral witness; (2) “but thou shalt meditate therein day and night”—exercise of soul and spirit; (3) “that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein”—putting the words to life (Josh. 1:8). In the first decades of the Church many Hebrew Christians succumbed to the dread disease of spiritual lethargy and dullness of hearing because they had not trained their faculties to distinguish between good and evil (Heb. 5:11–14).

Harry Golden, in Only in America, decries those whom he calls the “knuckleheads” who have reduced scholarship to the level of knowing the population of Tokyo and the batting average of Babe Ruth. Albert Einstein’s genius lay not in any ability to memorize—his “forgetter” was a plague to him—but in his ability to construct conclusions from facts. Golden illustrates this characteristic of Einstein by his hobby of playing the violin. If one had asked Einstein where Vivaldi was born or how many children he had, the professor would simply have said, “Please, let me just play it for you on my violin.”

But in insisting upon our conviction that Bible teaching is not a process of fattening by mere fact-imparting, we must beware of two pitfalls. The first is that of minimizing the importance and denying the truth of the facts themselves, even to the point of maintaining that the source of their recording is immaterial. This is wrong. Consider an illustration. As inhabitants of the earth we may not be impressed when told that the earth’s axis is tilted at a twenty-three-degree angle. Yet this fact is vital to the very survival of mankind; were it otherwise, all the earth’s water would converge on the areas of the two poles, building up uninhabitable mountains of ice and dehydrating the rest of the earth’s surface. So with the contents of the Bible, including its myriads of facts, natural and supernatural; the veracity of the words is essential regardless of our knowledge or understanding of them. Furthermore, if our present Bible is not substantially pure, then God’s power to preserve it pure may be questioned; and if the original text was not infallible, then the act of God-breathing loses its supernatural creative character.

Pulpit Anemia

The second pitfall is anemic preaching and Bible teaching short on content of biblical fact. Such pulpit anemia reflects the weakness of the kind of seminary training that neglects Bible study per se. Apparently that was a shortcoming of some American seminaries even in the first decades of the century. In an article back in 1923, Robert W. Rogers said, “What is to be done in this crisis? Let me state it with a certain daring simplicity. The Bible needs a new emphasis in the theological seminary.… Who wants biblical preaching, let him see to it that the preachers of tomorrow are today filled, saturated, steeped in the Bible” (“After Thirty Years,” The Christian Advocate, September 27, 1923). While facts are not the end of preaching and teaching, facts are the framework and dynamic of the evangel. The redemption of a dry, bony sermon is not the deletion of the facts but, in Phillips Brooks’s words, the “clothing it with flesh.”

With a desire to make preaching relevant, many ministers expound their views about contemporary issues apart from a firm emphasis upon the Bible’s authoritative “Thus saith the Lord” and its historical “And it came to pass.” Samuel Zwemer with keen insight used to warn preachers against majoring in minors by this exhortation, “Throw away the scabbard; wield the sword!” The facts are not only relevant; they are basic. One cannot preach on the Easter faith of resurrection without grounding it in the Easter fact of Christ’s resurrected body. One cannot preach on future judgment and ignore the fact of hell.

Preaching or teaching that merely skims the surface of the biblical facts goes back to the preparatory stages of Bible study. In the preparation of sermons, whether topical or expository, the Bible must be more than just an aid, or illustration, or prooftext, occasionally used. It must be the source and authority of the message, its life and inspiration and power, and even the determinant of the mood in which the sermon is to be delivered. If the Bible is all this to the preacher in his study, it can be this for his hearer in the pew.

One method of Bible study that can help cure the anemia described above is the inductive method, which follows the sound scientific order of (1) observation: what does it say? (2) interpretation: what does it mean? (3) application: how is this to be applied?

The most prominent feature of inductive study is the first stage, which demands comprehensive first-hand observation of what the Bible says or implies and how it does this. Hours spent here are premium hours, because correct observation is basic to correct interpretation. Inductive study is essentially analytical; it involves studying a passage’s various parts (content) and their relations (form) and letting this study build upon itself to final conclusions. This method of Bible study also encourages independent thought, for in its initial stages outside aids are avoided in order to leave the door open to the inspiration of first-hand discover)’. Preachers and teachers intent on making the Scriptures live for others would do well in their preparation to go to the passage of the Bible to be expounded, to spend much time observing and letting the Bible speak for itself, to use pencil and paper in analysis, looking for “hook-and-eye” structural relations—all with the aim of deriving the passage’s meaning, implications, and practical applications. To live with the passage will lead to making it live for others.

Thus the facts of the Bible are foundational. Independent of men’s responses, God’s Word is forever “settled in heaven” (Ps. 119:89). That is the objective side of the coin. On the subjective side is the truth that what men do with the facts determines their personal destiny. Therefore Bible teaching, whether by way of pulpit, teacher’s desk, or writer’s pen, must aim deeper than the storage compartments of the mind. Dealing with souls whose daily life and eternal destiny are determined by heart decisions, it must storm the will and plead for the choice of redemptive options. This is what Paul had in mind in the succinct charge to Timothy, his understudy, “Preach [Greek kerusso] the Word!” Kerusso means to proclaim as a herald sent from a throne, and so Paul was telling Timothy that as God’s ambassador he was to claim a response from his hearers.

Training athletes is a challenging vocation. As the raw recruits for track stand on the field on the first day of training, the keen eye of the coach scans the squad for an initial appraisal. What could he hope for without the miracle of lung and heart, the secret source of endurance, the desire to win? He lays before his charges the goal each member must work for, the toil and faithfulness of training expected, the health habits demanded, the races to be won. The coach will always be around to help and direct; but come the race, the boys will be on their own.

How much more profitable Bible teaching would be if the goal were to train strong, steady Christian runners, helping them to learn to run the race of life on their own. He who teaches thus will be grateful first of all for the efficacy of the Cross, the miracle of the Resurrection, and the power of the Gospel. He will thank God for the raw material, his pupils with their minds and hearts able to choose and learn and grow, their vision of faith and desire to know and serve God, their perseverance to learn at any cost. From the Bible the teacher will impart the Gospel of grace, the challenge of the Christian’s race, the disciplines of spiritual training, the essential sacrifices of self, and the techniques of the race. In so teaching, the preacher will make it clear to his congregation that his sermon is not a parcel to be carried away at the benediction and stored until needed; rather, it is to be put to the test now and used throughout the week. In the classroom the teacher will aim to show his pupils how to study the Bible for themselves and how to clothe their lives with it. Preachers and teachers will offer help and guidance along the way. But when all is said, they must leave their charges with the challenge, “The race is yours! Run it by the Book. From start to finish keep your eye on Jesus. And at the finish line, he will be there.”

A while ago I went back to college with my daughter. Aside from some summer in-service training in the Theological Seminary at Princeton in buildings and under conditions which change little and which her graduates remember with nostalgia, I had not seen what goes on inside present-day higher education.

“Hey, Daddy-o,” said the red-headed light of my life, “how about going to biology with me?”

So promptly at the scheduled hour—although in a large university no one cares whether you come or sleep in—I was seated beside her in an amphitheater that she casually told me could hold between seven and eight hundred. As in most universities, it is full on the first day of each semester and then the intellectual death rate begins to take its toll. This day there were probably no more than six hundred, which is still larger than most congregations on Sunday morning. The bell, however, was still tolling for them. We sat at long tables that struck us in the chest at the proper height to compel us to stay awake and take notes.

The lecturer, a Ph.D. in biological science, was a woman who is rather a favorite of the students because she relates her material to everyday life. On this first day of classes after the Thanksgiving holiday, the lecture happened to be on the complicated process of digestion. The lecturer reminded the class of the yet undigested cold turkey within them and then plunged immediately into the task at hand, which, like the legendary question to the centipede—“How do you manage with all those legs?”—was calculated to make us so amazed with what was going on inside us that we wouldn’t be able to function properly.

The lecturer had a microphone about her neck; control of the lights in the room and the projector was at the tip of her toes; instead of a blackboard she had in front of her an illuminated writing pad that threw the important words on a screen behind her. But as I sat there, my memory took me back to biology as I had studied it some thirty years before, and I marveled not only at the technology that made the modern classroom itself such an amazing place but also at the amount of detail gathered by biology since I studied it. The list of enzymes in the pancreas alone would drive you mad.

As the lecturer talked rapidly on toward that deadline beyond which no professor dares go lest feet shuffle and books be dropped, two sentences appeared for me on the classroom wall, behind her writings, superimposed on a full-color drawing of the stomach and intestines. They were from Luke 12:55, 56:

And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?

The teacher was giving the most convincing testimony to the fact of and the power of and the intent of God I had ever heard. After describing the breakdown of the protein we eat into amino acids and mentioning five or six steps which she said were chemically unfathomable at points, she stated that the food comes to a chemical composition that is “the only composition which would enable the cells to absorb it.” And I wanted to stand up in the midst of a class dedicated to the proposition that evolution makes all things equal and shout that the hand of God was right there in their midst.

Again and again in tracing the biological process the lecturer would arrive at the mysterious end by which all things worked out for good for the turkey dinner and the class. And I thought that even if she could not have shown us a cross section of the soul, she could at least have written across her diagram of the liver, “the work of God.” For the liver, by means of the marvelous ATP, changes glucose into the “only” substance (glucose phosphate) into which it can be transformed and still be used by the body. And parenthetically, it struck me that there is a high degree of correlation between the abuse of the liver, the abuse of the human spirit, and the wages of sin.

But as I looked at the sleepy young faces I knew that they did not see the handwriting. Moreover, I realized that unless the prophet pointed with the eternal pointer to the sovereign God and wrote on the projected cellulose page, “In the beginning God,” they would not know. And it’s a fact, dear reader, that when the lecturer turned off the flow of scientific fact and shut off the lights, I looked at the clock on the back wall and it said five minutes to twelve.

The ministry of the early Church mirrored the mission of Jesus. The apostles were called and trained by him as he carried on his own ministry. Later on deacons were called by the Spirit and ordained by the apostles. Presbyters or elders were likewise called and ordained to serve in churches, the senior elder consecrated at first by the apostles to serve as the bishop or presiding elder of the congregation. Besides this, there were in the early Church prophets, teachers, healers, and unordained ministers called by God to his service.

While it is difficult to establish the earliest principles of Christian mission, it seems clear that the original outreach was to the Jews. Even in our Lord’s time this was extended to the Samaritans and others outside the Jewish community. Then through St. Paul and his co-laborers the Christian mission was broadened to include the Gentiles, and finally the whole world.

From earliest times the followers of “the Way” understood that baptism into Christ’s body meant participation in the mission of that body. All who became part of the body were expected to become workers by taking up some aspect of the ministry of our Lord.

It seems clear that there were few, if any, professional clergymen in the early years of the Church’s life. St. Paul himself was self-employed. As he said in his address to the Ephesian elders, “I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have showed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus … It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:33–35).

It is difficult to establish clearly the social and economic characteristics of the group that formed the fellowship in these early years. But undoubtedly a great many of them were poor and from the working classes. On the other hand, Scripture and early church history tell us that converts to the “fellowship of the Way” and the “good news” of the Gospel came also from the educated classes and from those of high political and economic status. As the centuries passed, more such converts were made. The good news met personal and collective needs in an empire affected by the changes in the power structure of the Roman government and no longer secure in its old gods and religious observances. The old order was passing, and the Christian Church was gaining in temporal power.

Service Of The Self-Employed

In the early Church, preparing the members of the fellowship for mission seems to have been done largely through in-training methods. Both ordained and unordained ministries reflected the presence of many self-employed persons rather than professionals, as we know them today—a fact sometimes overlooked because communal living was an ingredient of the early fellowship at Jerusalem. Indeed, the rapid spread of the Gospel throughout the Roman empire, in spite of periods of persecution and other difficulties, shows that leadership composed of baptized members committed to the principles of Christ and his mission must have been largely self-employed. And in one way or another this pattern persisted for centuries.

It is interesting that one of the keys to the rapid growth of present-day cults and newer churches is that many of their ministers are self-employed. This is true, for example, of the Shepherd Movement in West Africa and the Congo, of Revival or Revival Zion in Jamaica and Trinidad, and of Pentecostal and Holiness churches. These and similar groups have a very small proportion of “professional” ministers; most are self-employed.

The followers of the way that came to be known as the Catholic Church, though initially resistant to their cultural milieu, were more and more affected by the cultures and sub-cultures of their time. New converts brought into the Christian family many values, beliefs, and concepts from pagan religion and other aspects of pagan culture; in fact, a process of syncretism introduced many principles quite different from our Lord’s own teachings and the experience and teaching of the early Church.

Many of the pagan religious structures centered around priests and priestesses who were often professional in the sense that they withdrew from the general work and life of the community, and Christian converts from paganism early affected the characteristics of the Christian ministry. In time the ministry became largely professional. The ministers of Christ were increasingly removed from the total stream of productive society, until all the working members of a church were in some kind of religious order. The process continued, and within the professional ministries of the Catholic Church there came to be a division between holy and more holy professionals, the holiest being known as the “religious.” The purest form of the “religious” were men and women in orders that required a contemplative life, completely withdrawn from society.

On the other hand, because of the increasing popularity of the Roman church and because of a similar trend in the Orthodox church toward professional ministries, the clergy became powerful political figures. For a long period in the Western world, church leaders dominated the political and economic structures of society. Popes, cardinals, and other clergy dictated to the sociological, educational, and scientific life of the times. The Church was in the world, and this made the Church extremely worldly. And the Church and its sense of mission were far removed from Jesus and the apostles and the group known as the “followers of the Way” in the first few centuries after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

From Love To Destruction

For the average baptized person, mission meant merely adhering to the rules and regulations of the ecclesiastical institution. Missionaries were professionals bringing with them what they believed to be Christian rules and the corporate life of the Church. At the same time, these missionaries were serving to promulgate the materialistic aspects of their cultures to such an extent that the total missionary movement seemed to be aimed at the actual destruction of other cultures. The love and other spiritual dynamics of the “followers of the Way” were changed by the dogma and institutional methods of the Church. Most of what had appealed to the people about Christ and his mission was muted. The Church was placed at the service of powerful economic and political leaders developing a colonial policy in an attempt to dominate the whole world.

The Reformation brought a new theological dimension through its recovery of the basic doctrine of justification by faith. Yet it did not essentially change the process by which Western culture was affecting the other cultures of the world.

Because the Church, as the body of Christ, no matter how segmented, is made up of individual human beings, and because the Bible and the sacraments contain within them the spiritual power of God, no age was without persons whose lives reflected Christ. Some of them, like Savonarola, were put to death for their efforts.

History makes clear that though men can be kept in bondage by the power of political, ecclesiastical, and cultural structures and institutions, the Spirit of God and his love, exhibited in the incarnation and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, can always break through and set men free.

One of the problems of our time, then, is how to recover in our Christian mission the power of the Word made flesh. If we cannot do this, the institutions now established as parts of the Christian Church will ultimately be destroyed in many parts of the world, either as useless and innocuous or as enemies of the people. If this happens, the body of Christ will doubtless become visible in quite new forms from anything we now know. Christ died and rose again, defying the natural order. He is the Alpha and Omega. He was at the beginning and will be at the end. The creative forces of God cannot be stopped. God speaks to all men. All men are made in his image and likeness. All men, therefore, can hear his Word and be redeemed, can be converted, and can become part of Christ’s body. If salvation could have come by law, there would have been no need for God to send his Son into the world. There would have been no need for his ministry and life among us, no need for his crucifixion and resurrection.

Consider now some practical questions. What kind of person chooses the ministry today and why? What kind of ministry is he trained for? How does present seminary education equip men for their task? Underlying all such questions there must be a clearer understanding of what the Church is or should be, who its ministers are, and how many types of ministries there should be. There must be consideration of the role of the professional minister and of whether or not this professional can change his role to that of a self-employed minister—and vice versa. Moreover, the task of the self-employed minister, whether ordained or unordained, and the training needed for men working in the latter kind of ministry need to be discussed, as well as where the minister should receive his training. And what should be the function of theological institutions, parish churches, and training centers in the whole educational process?

Within every Christian group we find differences of opinion on even so simple a question as whether the parish, as such, still has value. All denominations or communions would fall for lack of support if parishes were liquidated, unless completely new lines of support were established. Moreover, parishes, as such, are separate and almost completely independent entities; hence, no group of theoreticians can decide that they should be abolished, since by and large they are the units that make up the controlling government of the various communions.

What is apparent in the face of such differences in the minds of intelligent men planning the programs of our churches is the unmistakable fact that the basic parish units must at best be restructured, if they are to be effective in our day. Careful study of the past may reveal types of action units set in cultures quite different from our own that can be adapted for our use and made valuable assets for ministry in our world. Two merit special mention: cells and centers of action.

The Cellular Structure

In the first centuries, followers of the way of Jesus were often banded together in small, cell-like structures for prayer, study, and action. Part of the strength of the body of Christ in mission in those centuries came as a direct result of these cells. In the middle years of church history this principle of organization died away, and it never reappeared in force, though from time to time organizations reminiscent of it were begun.

In the midst of World War II in 1941, members of the Church of England who had assembled in conference at Malvern spoke to the Anglican church in all parts of the world, if not to all Christians torn by internal and external strife. Many things said in the document they issued were important, but one section had direct bearing on recommended Christian action for their time. It said:

Let cells be formed upon the basis of common prayer, study, and service. Groups should be formed wherever possible of people not ready as yet to join in Christian devotion, but who come together to study and discuss what is the Christian way of life for them and for society. In all such schemes, the Christian people of a district belonging to various denominations should all combine to foster true neighborliness in the community.

Cells, therefore, or small working units, gathering people together for prayer, study, and action in close neighborhood areas or in close working areas, embody a principle that must be considered. People who work in one department in a factory or business or people grouped together by professional interests can, by meeting and studying together, stimulate one another and become effective witnesses for Christ in their community.

One of the significant things about cells working dynamically within their culture is that they may vary in size from as few as two or three to as many as twelve or eighteen. Through this fellowship, individuals can develop joint action programs, can assist one another, and can influence others around them.

In the thirties and forties, and, perhaps, even the sixties, the word “cell” was almost always linked with the word “Communist,” since cells are used by the Communist party. Yet long before the birth of the Communist party, this type of structure had been used by “followers of the Way.” And we who follow Him have a prior claim to the cell technique in our mission to the world.

The cell group should be formed with a solid nucleus of believers, but it should also be open to men and women of good will regardless of creed. Cells should not be limited in their program of action but should reflect through their work, prayer, and study the manner in which Jesus himself worked during his ministry before his trial and crucifixion. While conversion to Jesus personally is to be desired for all participants, these groups must not because of the inner corps of converted people be exclusive. Training for various types of ministries active in cells is needed. Because of the fluid nature of this kind of organization, training should be adapted to all kinds of situations in modern society.

Gathering For Action

The other kind of unit, the center of action, also reflects the earliest centuries of church history, when the faithful were gathered together first by apostles and then by senior presbyters. It is possible that in many situations in which the Church finds itself, action centers might replace regular parishes. In less complex situations the centers might be set up within parishes.

As in the old days, centers of action may be used to train catechumens who then are baptized and brought into the body of Christ and participation in his mission in various kinds of ministries. Today centers of action should also offer instruction in all kinds of Christian work. But while these centers must be first and foremost religious, with the Eucharist at the heart of their fellowship, they may also afford opportunities for research into the psychological and sociological problems of the neighborhood. Although instructors should include professional clergy, most of the teachers must be self-employed clergy and unordained lay workers. These unordained workers should include such categories as prophet and teacher.

In both the cell and the center of action, most of the training for Christian mission will be in-training. Christian scholars from every discipline should discuss the methods and curricula needed to prepare professional or self-employed clergy or non-ordained laity to carry on training programs preparing church members to witness wherever they are.

But the possibility of training the whole Church for mission is vast and reaches far beyond what can be discussed in a single article. It demands the pooling of all the talents of convinced Christians. The priesthood and ministry of the laity is therefore not a pious wish but an absolute necessity. There can be no satisfactory fulfillment of our responsibility for mission without it.

The task is not the work of professional and self-employed clergy alone but must include all men and women who hear the Word of Christ and become one with him through faith. If man was made in the image and likeness of God; if man because of his creation has free will; if man through the exercise of his free will created culture; if this culture then restricts that which God created—then the only answer God could have given was to send into this culture his Son, and through his incarnation, birth, life, death, and resurrection, again set men free. This was and is the good news. This testimony was and is our ministry in mission—our Alpha and Omega—our total and only concern.

There are those who feel that the present-day Church has become too preoccupied with matters and processes of government. Others contend that the Church has isolated itself unconscionably from political affairs and must answer the charge of having been a disinterested spectator of mounting confusion and threatening disaster in government. Some would identify the “divine” and the “secular” orders as all but mutually exclusive. Others would stress their interdependence as varying aspects of the activity of the God of the process of history. A false dichotomy, or an equally questionable identification, has been supported by able theological reasoning from the beginning of the Christian era. The rise of pietism as a reaction against Roman Catholic legalism and sacramentarianism fostered a tendency to view the Church as properly aloof from the rough-and-tumble of the political arena. On the other hand, the accentuating of Christian social concern in democratic America, and in conjunction with the rise of a technological society generally, precipitated a massive movement for church participation in securing legislative guarantees of the rights of free men and for demonstration of the “relevance” of Christianity to the social milieu in which the Church must bear its witness and vindicate its commission.

The question we must face is whether the Church’s impact upon society is to be direct or derivative. Will not the Christian Church make its proper contribution to the social situation and to political movements (which the social situation dictates) by fulfilling its original commission, rather than by acquiring new functions not implied by the nature of the Church as explicated in the New Testament? Is there not serious peril for the Church in seeking to exercise public influence at the expense of neglecting the ministry of personal regeneration? Is it not possible that the Church’s feverish preoccupation with social questions may represent a form of escapism from the primary and more difficult obligation of bringing persons into redemptive relationship with God and their fellow men through the word of the Gospel? These are leading questions which I would answer in the affirmative.

The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of ample budgets may mean barrenness for the life of the Church as well as for the life of the individual Christian. The Church that seeks to “save its own life” by procedures running counter to the essential tasks of the Church as the “body of Christ” will lose its life. The law of spiritual survival is penetratingly clear. When the Church abrogates the leadership of its divine Head in favor of the philosophies and plans of men, it chooses a disaster course. The Church exists to serve the Kingdom of God, not the kingdoms of men.

At the beginning of the Book of Acts this issue was settled for the disciples by the risen Christ. Asked if he would, in his resurrection power and prestige, restore the kingdom to Israel (1:6), he sharply rebuked their desire to use him for the fulfillment of their selfish, nationalistic, this-worldly ambitions, and reminded them that it was neither his task nor theirs to restore any kingdom built with human hands. Their task was rather to bear witness to his saving power, to the reality of his Kingdom of righteousness and peace. Their commission was to witness in the power of the Spirit from their own locality to the uttermost parts of the earth, to proclaim the Gospel in nations under every kind of human government and subject to every type of man-made laws.

The ineluctable fact that will not yield to the cleverest of reasoning is that ecclesiastical attempts to reform society will have little effect except in political situations marked by leadership that is, to an influential degree, committed to Christian standards of morality and justice. Christian persuasion moves but little those who do not share its premises. Thus the Church’s primary and unchanging task is to seek the conversion of men to the will of God, so that, in their spheres of influence in national life, they will exercise a moral force that exposes injustice and social evil and creates an atmosphere in which these can and must be challenged by legislative action incorporating Christian principles. It is through the redeemed community, not by high-sounding resolutions passed by church courts, that the conditions of a renewed and reformed society will be met.

Over the main entrance to what we should call the City Hall of Glasgow there appeared for generations the words, “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word.” After the last World War, the building was renovated and the ancient city motto shortened to, “Let Glasgow flourish.” Modern streamlining had eliminated the vital part of the motto. It is by the preaching of the Word that the public conscience is informed; it is by the proclamation of the revealed Word and will of Almighty God that a citizenry is made aware of social and industrial evils to be corrected and is challenged to crusade for conditions honoring the worth of human personality, the principles of human brotherhood, and the inalienable rights of men as those “for whom Christ died.”

Shortly after the close of World War II, four Russian Baptist leaders were permitted to visit the United States for the first time since the Iron Curtain had come down. In Washington these spiritual leaders were the object of much interest, and rightly so. During a press conference, a reporter for a large city paper said to one of the Russian visitors: “As a Christian I am sure you cannot concur in all that the Soviet government believes and practices. How do you oppose these things?” The Russian pastor replied quietly but with telling force, “We preach Christ.” That was all! That was what the first-century Church did in nations under another of the ruthless totalitarian regimes of history. And the two-edged sword of the Word, in hands empowered by the Spirit of him who is King of kings and Lord of lords, gradually forced back paganism until one day the Christian faith was adopted by a Roman emperor and proclaimed the official religion of the empire. I believe that the sacrifice of much which that ancient victory promised may have resulted from the abandonment of the strategy of the primitive Church (as defined so clearly to the “facing-both-ways” disciples by their risen Master) and a shift to reliance upon the techniques and resources of earthly kingdoms.

One thing more must be said. The Church’s waning influence upon the mores of men may in part be accounted for by its inept use of political procedures as a substitute for skillful uses of the resources of the Gospel. There are many secular issues with which the Church is not qualified to deal. As Barker and Preston in their joint volume, Christians in Society, point out, “The Christian Church has suffered, and still does suffer in this country [Britain], from Christians and Church bodies who publish statements and comments on matters which require a certain technical competence which it is only too obvious they do not possess.” In similar terms, the “Report of the Commission for the Interpretation of God’s Will in the Present Crisis as Presented to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland During the War Years” says, “Our religion cannot instruct us as to the technical ways and means by which a just ordering of our social life, a proper distribution of wealth, and an equitable use of our national resources can best be attained. These are matters to which the Christian revelation does not extend, and in regard to which Christians are no wiser than other men.”

Let the Church speak with authority about the Gospel committed to it. Let it denounce evils that the light of revealed truth exposes. Let it cry out for economic justice, racial good will, social order and decency, and a dozen more ends to be desired by the Christian man. But let it refrain from attempting to legislate these issues; from assuming a pose of worldly wisdom in order to dictate terms to which governments must capitulate; from concerning itself so directly with the kingdoms of men that the cause of the Kingdom of God is neglected—or, worse still, deemed irrelevant because of the siren blandishments of short-order procedures. As Charles Malik said in a speech to the United Nations:

We must hope and pray that there will develop in the Western world a mighty spiritual movement which will rediscover and reaffirm its glorious values, and fulfill mankind’s longing for a more just order.… The real issue today is not over communism; it is whether Western society, conceived in the joyous liberties of the Greek city-states, and nurtured on Christian charity, can still recover from the worship of false and alien gods, and return to its authentic sources.

It is this issue that confronts the Christian Church today as in generations past. The Church’s influence will be in direct proportion to its dedication to this task and its success in performing it to the glory of God and for the redemption of men by his power.

Recent discussions have focused widespread attention on the degree of Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ. A pronouncement by the Archbishop of Canterbury, a resolution of the World Council of Churches, and the proposed schema discussed at the last session of the Vatican Council have all condemned as unjust and irrational the stigmatizing of the Jewish people as sinners above all men because of the participation, along with Gentiles, of some of their fathers in the rejection of Jesus Christ. It has been rightly pointed out by many that in so far as the Jewish leaders were guilty (and if we accept the New Testament accounts it is impossible to exonerate them completely), they acted as representatives of the entire fallen human race. This is all to the good and may do something to counter, all too late in the day, some of the utterly unchristian propaganda of the past that has proved so effective a stumbling block in the commendation of the Gospel to the Jewish people.

There are, however, dangers that, one error having been pointed out, others will follow in the drawing of false conclusions from the established fact, namely, the common guilt of Jews and Gentiles. Some are already beginning to argue from this premise that there is nothing special about the Jews after all; that all the talk about the special position of Israel is just poppycock; and that they represent just another religious denomination which, with a little ironing out of minor differences, might well be brought into the ecumenical movement.

More and more frequently on both sides of the Atlantic it is beginning to be said that Jews are not proper subjects for evangelism and that certainly any specifically missionary approach to them is altogether mistaken and foredoomed to failure. In the past some have objected to Jewish evangelism on the grounds that the Jew is different from all other men. God deals with him in another way. The day for his incorporation into Christ is not yet. One day, in God’s good time, without any human effort “all Israel shall be saved.” Until then the Christian Church has quite enough to do with the Gentile world, whose need is far more urgent. It is difficult to see how such ideas could ever be reconciled with the New Testament picture of the apostolic missionaries, who inevitably went to the Jew first, or with the teaching of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, unless one isolated statement is taken out of its context. But at least those who advanced such ideas did recognize that Israel was in some sense a peculiar people. Only a generation of Christians brought up in almost complete ignorance of the Old Testament could possibly lose sight of this fact.

Dr. Jacob Gartenhaus has said truly enough, “In all your dealings with the Jew, remember that, although he affirms that he wants to be treated like any other human being, he was, is, and ever will be aware of being a peculiar people.” However much Jews may seek to assimilate themselves to the customs and habits of their Gentile neighbors, the sense of difference remains, and, however unwillingly, the Jew cannot fail in some way or other to reveal his distinctiveness. There is no way in which he can evade his peculiar vocation as a member of the people with whom God made his solemn covenant. So long as the Jew remains in the world he is a living reminder of the age-long purposes of God. It will be recalled that as a young man Nicolai Berdyaev sought to apply the materialistic theory of history to the development of one people after another and found that it broke down completely in the case of the Jews. It is considerations of this sort that prompted Jacques Maritain to speak of “the Mystery of Israel,” a mystery which he likened to the Mystery of the Church and which caused Karl Barth to say that the Jew and his history provided the only possible “natural” proof of the existence of God.

The dealings of God with Israel reveal in microcosmic form the pattern of his dealings with mankind as a whole. Israel is chosen to fulfill the special mission of revealing the will and purpose of God to mankind. It is the ideal will of God that she should do this freely and willingly; but when she fails to cooperate voluntarily, her very disobedience is woven into the eternal plan of the God who makes even the wrath of man to praise him. Abraham, the man of faith, responds willingly to the call of God and becomes known as his friend. In Jacob, the divine wrestler has to struggle with self-will and deceit before Jacob can become Israel, the soldier of God. But the deeds of the self-willed Jacob, the deception of his brother Esau, and the flight to Laban are all woven into the divine purpose. So too the treachery of Joseph’s brethren, inexcusably criminal in itself, is turned to good account by the all-wise God. When his brethren feared that he might take vengeance upon them after the death of Jacob he replied, “… am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Gen. 50:19, 20, RSV).

This principle runs throughout the whole history of Israel in the Old Testament. Good kings like Josiah and Hezekiah have the joy of seeing the blessing come to their people through their obedience. But even the wickedness of an Ahab cannot defeat the purposes of God. Jerusalem may be laid waste, the temple destroyed, the people carried away captive into Babylon; but even these disasters can be used by the God who cries through his prophet, “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the Lord, who do all these things” (Isa. 45:6b, 7, RSV). Cyrus the heathen tyrant becomes the unconscious instrument for the deliverance of His people; he is even described as the Lord’s “anointed” (Isa. 45:1).

So too in the time of Christ. John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, sounded the authentic prophetic note: “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” There were those who heeded the warning and were thus ready to welcome the true Messiah. It is noteworthy that the first disciples—Andrew, Simon Peter, James, and John—were among those who heard John the Baptist preach. Theirs was to be the joy of willingly and consciously cooperating in the mission of the Messiah. But even the treachery of Judas, the envy of the priests, and the blind opposition of Annas and Caiaphas was used by God for the fulfillment of his purpose. Pontius Pilate might seek to wash his hands of the whole matter, but he could not thus escape the role in the great drama of redemption for which alone posterity remembers him. Nor could he avoid being the unconscious instrument of Providence. Jesus rightly reminded him, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above” (John 19:11a). Pilate was a Gentile, but the principle of God’s dealing with Israel was extended to him. No one who had anything to do with God’s Christ could avoid a share in the divine plan—some willingly by their obedience, others unwillingly by their very rejection of him.

What is true of individuals is true also of the nation Israel. St. Paul makes clear that the partial blindness of Israel according to the flesh, though it cannot have been the ideal will of God, has nevertheless been used by him for the inclusion of the Gentiles. Ultimately Israel according to the flesh will also be brought in, “and so all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. 11:26a). It was the vision of the majesty and immensity of God’s plan, including both human obedience and disobedience in its sweep, that caused St. Paul to exclaim, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33).

There is, however, another sense in which the Jew is like other men. He is like them in being a sinner, needing just as much as his Gentile brother the redeeming love of God in Christ. In this sense, “There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek” (Rom. 10:12a). The Gospel of Christ “is the power of God unto salvation … to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). St. Paul would have given short shrift to those who suggested that it was best not to disturb the Jew, that the Jew is likely to find God more easily through rabbinical tradition than through the Gospel of Christ. Whether they realize it or not, those who advance such views have in reality finished with the Gospel. To deny the Jew’s need of salvation through Christ is in the end to deny this necessity for any man. Better to leave the Hindu to the Vedas, the Muslim to the Koran, the Buddhist to his Noble Eight-Fold Path. If we are to accept the modern relativist position, this is the logical outcome, and not only missions to Jews but missions to all who profess another faith should on this basis be regarded not only as rather bad form but also as mistaken in both policy and practice.

We have not heard the last of this issue. The question will be raised again and again, and it may well be that our attitude to the Jew and his spiritual need will prove the touchstone of our faith in the Gospel.

Many responsible Christian leaders today are becoming concerned about the relative growth of our churches. The revival of religious interest that followed World War II seems to be subsiding. Additions on profession of faith have been declining for several years. The trend of waning church loyalty and decreased membership that has long been evident in Europe seems to be spreading to America.

Is the decline of the Church inevitable? Are we truly entering a post-Christian period? Is the Christian Church really unable to reach an affluent, sophisticated, and materialistic society? Has the scientism of the twentieth century made revealed Christianity incompatible with modern man? I think not.

The first requirement of any church that desires effective evangelism is that it be a community of faith. If the Church is simply the expression of the prevailing culture, it has little to offer a lost world. If it is only a mildly respectable religious club that gives its blessing to its pagan members without making any great demands, it will never attract sinful humanity. The Church must be a fellowship of believers who worship and serve the risen Christ, a communion of committed, disciplined souls who are crusading for Christ and witnessing to his saving grace and power.

Effective evangelism must begin with the Church. There must be renewal within before we can effectively witness to the world. That which will renew will evangelize. The path toward renewal is the way to effective evangelism.

A prerequisite for spiritual revival is the proclamation of a mighty Saviour. We shall never reach a lost world with a Noble Example. We shall never attract a wayward race with a Master Teacher. Nor will men be won to an existential faith that is not firmly rooted in the reality of history. Man needs a Saviour. In Jesus Christ we find God. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” He was “God manifest in the flesh.”

The world does not need a better philosophy; it needs a Saviour. It does not need a new morality; it needs new life. It does not need reformation; it needs regeneration in Christ. Too often the Church has offered humanistic philosophy to lost sinners. This is giving stones when men ask for bread. We have preached morality and have not offered forgiveness and grace.

It has been noted that the modern Church is not a singing church. No great hymns are being written. You do not sing about a philosophy, and you do not rejoice in a cold morality. We sing about a Person, a Saviour, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” In the Cross of Christ there is an attraction that will bring devotion in the Church, that will bring sinners to repentance and faith. In the Cross we see the love of God. In the Cross we see the awful penalty of sin. In the Cross we see a Saviour dying for us. Let us preach the Christ of the Cross and the empty tomb, and we shall see the world kneel at the feet of Jesus. “… ‘every knee shall bow’ … ‘every tongue shall confess’ that Jesus Christ is the Lord.…”

If we are to have effective evangelism we must believe in the saving power of the Gospel. The Church is not for nice people but for sinners saved by grace. There is no sin so great, no heart so hard, no person fallen so low, but that Jesus Christ can forgive and transform him and make him whole. Perhaps the Church has lost faith in the changing and redeeming power of the Saviour. Alcoholics can be made sober, prostitutes made pure, materialists made spiritually minded, sick personalities made well; broken homes can be restored, and wrecked lives can have a new beginning in Christ. Our faith to obtain life-changing power must pass from the psychiatrist’s couch to the altar of prayer.

Let us offer to the world the mighty Saviour. In so doing we shall see the beginning of renewal in the Church and salvation for the lost.

Another requirement for effective evangelism is authority. Protestantism in the mid-twentieth century has not lacked creative and imaginative programs. The Church now has better prepared leadership than at any other time in its history. It has the finest equipment and the most beautiful and comfortable buildings it has ever had. Yet with all these advantages we are failing to give an effective witness to a lost world.

The great need of our day is not methods but message. We have the methods, but in some places it seems we have lost the message. “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” When the Church simply echoes contemporary philosophy, it never attracts a needy world. When it is confused about the person of Christ, who will turn to him for salvation? When its theology reflects a pagan culture, who will be convicted of his sins?

To be effective the Church must have a sure message. It must have an authority greater than the finite mind of the latest theologian. It must have a message that is changeless and timeless. In our desire to be relevant we must realize that the Christ of the Scriptures is always relevant. We must be able to say, “Thus saith the Lord,” and “I know in whom I believe.”

The authority for evangelism is the Bible, the written Word of God. The message of evangelism is the message of the Scriptures. We shall reach a frustrated, lost world more effectively when we declare without apology the gospel message contained in the Bible.

There is at least one other requirement for effective evangelism. It is a burdened, concerned heart. We may have a great theology but a cold heart. We may be orthodox but strangely lacking in love. We may be so concerned with dotting every theological i that we lose sight of the purpose of theology. We may become so obsessed with our particular view of the sacraments or with our interpretation of eschatology that we fail to offer Christ in a winsome and wholesome manner. We may ride our theological hobbyhorses while the world goes to hell. Some may become so concerned with proper liturgical worship that they fail to proclaim the living Christ to the lost sinner who knows nothing of proper liturgy and could not care less. It is possible to become so involved in the administration of a church—promoting a program, raising a budget, organizing committees—that we forget the purpose of the church. Regardless of what else a church may be doing, if it is not winning souls to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, it has failed.

The key to effective evangelism is the warm-hearted, Spirit-filled messenger with a vital concern for the souls of men. God’s messenger must have a message—the message of Christ as the Saviour of mankind and the only hope of the world. That message must be firmly grounded in the Bible and made relevant to the needs of persons. With such evangelism we can reach the world for Christ.

In the past few years “church renewal” has become a common expression. It has now by and large filtered down from national and state offices and seminaries to the local churches themselves. Although at least three highly commendable emphases have characterized this movement, the most crucial issue in church renewal still has not been squarely faced by those involved in this burgeoning development.

Let us begin on a positive note, looking briefly at these three valuable emphases. First is the enlivening theological renaissance. For some of us who are older this has been the most satisfying of the three. Reared in homes committed to biblical literalism, some years ago we were catapulted into the arms of “liberal” Christianity by the “enlightenment” of our college studies. Here the emphasis was on rationalism, ethics, and social action, while the sometimes embarrassing themes of sin, grace, reconciliation, redemption, and the Holy Spirit were often modulated to a mere whisper.

But the dire poverty of this Christianity appeared in due time. Its shallowness in the face of enormous corporate and private evils, its inability to renew and inspire men, its idolatrous man-centeredness, its failure to provide assurance of God’s ultimate victory—all these combined to bring its basic positions into serious question and cause many to reject its claims.

A few years ago a kind of “back to the Bible” movement began, even among sophisticated, intellectual Christians. The tendency to dilute the transcendence of God and the transforming power of the Gospel gave way in the fullness of appreciation over what God had done for man through Jesus Christ.

An example of the difference between the “liberal” and the new view may be seen in the approaches made by each to the Protestant campus ministry. (Because I serve in this field, I draw my illustrative material from it. Pastors in the parish ministry could, no doubt, provide similar documentation from their field.) Several years ago one denomination stated the objectives of its “student work” in terms of the adult worker’s task. Here are the first three, and the most important, points:

1. To help in guiding the student in the development of an intelligent, socially constructive, ever-expanding philosophy of life and to help him make ethical decisions consistent with such a philosophy.

2. To guide the student in the development of an integrated Christian personality.

a. Worthful health attitudes, knowledge and habits, both physical and mental.

b. Satisfactory adjustments in normal social relations.

3. To lead to an intelligent appreciation of Jesus and the implications of the principles of his teaching for our personal and social living.

In contrast, here are a few lines from a paper, “New Patterns for the Campus Ministry,” prepared recently for the campus ministers of several denominations:

1. We begin with the affirmation that God has acted in Jesus Christ, reconciling his world to himself and setting men free to live in joyous, self-affirming relationship with him and with other men.

2. The act of God has occurred, and the Christian life is one of thanksgiving and praise. We now accept ourselves and our world as given to us, to be enjoyed responsibly in ways that glorify the Creator-Donor.

3. It is this act of God that is the Gospel: the good news that God is God, that he presides over history, and that the Kingdom is coming. God has defeated all the other powers in all creation, be they geographic or economic or national or racial or familial or political or social. The Kingdom of man has fallen and we are free.

The first statement urges that students be challenged to develop a pleasant, constructive philosophy of life, but the second has the goal of exposing students to the radical content of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The disparity between the two is striking: the first is man-centered, the second God-centered. We may well sigh with relief when we see biblical truth claiming its rightful position.

Rediscovering The Laity

The second development is what has been called the rediscovery of the role of the laity in the Church, or the recognition that the laity is the total witnessing, worshiping, and serving community—not just non-professional Christians as distinguished from the trained clergy. The laity comprises all committed members of the body of Christ, or the Church, including the clergy.

It is often pointed out that the enormous spread of Christianity over the Roman Empire in its first three hundred years of history can be accounted for only on the basis that the whole laity took seriously the call to witness to their faith. First Peter 2:9 was apparently a kind of commissioning of Christians to go forth into the world with their transforming message of hope and salvation: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (RSV).

One cannot read current Christian publications without meeting frequently this new and biblically authentic interpretation of the laity. In 1961 the Department on the Laity of the World Council of Churches published an ecumenical bibliography on the role of the laity in the Church, called Laici in Ecclesia, which included some 1,412 titles. These publications are in French, German, and English, and most of them have been published in the last fifteen years.

The third development is the recognition that Christians must be the Church at work in the world. Relentlessly the point is made that the Church must not hide in the comfort of buildings—that indeed the Church is not a building on the corner but rather the people of God in action wherever they are responding as the people of God. A minister known to the writer is so strongly opposed to applying the term “church” to a building that one suspects members of his congregation may face a semantic problem when they try to say where they are going on Sunday morning.

Certainly we should rejoice over this movement aimed to jolt Christians out of their tendency to stay in their safe, ghetto-like church buildings when they engage in their “Christian work.” That the world—the whole of it—is God’s, that he loves it, and that he rules in it (whether this is recognized or not) are strong propositions for Christians who have long supposed that the world, as if inherently evil, should be avoided as much as possible. An ecumenical document puts the matter this way: “Every testimony to Christ without reference to the world will lack reality; every statement about the world unrelated to Christ will fall short of the truth.”

This third emphasis is of greatest importance because it catches up the first two and points to their logical conclusion: The great reservoir of Christian workers (the laity) who have understood the real meaning of the Gospel and who thus have an authentic theology should leave their church buildings and undertake a Christian ministry to the world. Over and over again in the past few years, in magazines, official documents, conferences, and sermons, the theme has been repeated—the People of God (the Church) must go to the world.

Since all these emphases have been intensively pressed for some time, we have a right to suppose that the big new movement to win the world to Christ has begun to show some important visible results. But where shall we find evidence of this, except in unique and isolated instances? Do we see significant stirrings in New York, California, Minnesota? We may look and listen as hard as we wish, but only disappointment follows. There is no general upsurge of renewal.

Why not? Is there simply a lack of support for the ideas themselves, or are there other problems that have been overlooked? I believe that the second question points to the main difficulty, and I suggest two prior problems that must be met before the Church is ready to go to the world.

In the first place, when Christians try to speak the Gospel in words to non-Christians, they encounter immense difficulties. Although they may be poised for action in the world, they often suffer paralysis when the basic task confronts them. They are like some parakeets that make tentative flights into the world when the lid of their cage is removed but that really prefer the safety of the cage.

For an example of the kind of trap in which we are caught at this point, consider this statement from the paper, “New Patterns for the Campus Ministry,” mentioned earlier in this article. Observe how the statement, which proclaims such a bold, valid theology, suggests that campus ministers and students witness to their faith:

But all of the foregoing [ways by which individual Christians work in the world and demonstrate God’s lordship over all of life] must not avoid or replace the absolutely crucial witness of the individual Christian in his daily tasks. Here the opportunities come thick and fast, they are upon us suddenly, they are subtle and various: an administrator in the Dean’s office persistently raises the question of racial segregation; a faculty member asks about the over-emphasis on intercollegiate sports … an administrator supports academic freedom for persons of whatever persuasion; a teaching assistant uses his precious time and excellent opportunity to be a friend to a shy and homesick freshman.…

All of these and more, much more, may witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, because they judge the pretensions of men and call men to recognize that which stands over against them; they also show mercy, love, and forgiveness when these are needed.

Is this the way Christians witness to their faith to their fellow men in the world? Yes, undeniably. But—and the “but” is important—this is far from a complete witness to the Christian faith. After all, these admirable actions are also performed by good humanists and idealists who are avowedly non-religious. In fact, we may as well admit that the deeds of sensitive nonreligious persons often outshine those of Christians—as in the field of integration, for example.

Why does this paper on campus ministry not explain how Christians may tell non-Christians what it has so ably stated in its beginning paragraph—that “God has acted in Jesus Christ, reconciling his world to himself and setting men free to live in joyous, self-affirming relationship with him and with other men”? Surely it is not just by deed but also by word that Christians are to witness. Is this grand affirmation about Jesus Christ, which is the heart of the paper, to be kept a private secret of Christians over which they will rejoice when they meet for their own little study and worship programs? If it is not, then somehow the Gospel must be expressed in words, since no number of good deeds will convey the actual content of the Gospel—the good news that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures; that God presides over history; and that the Kingdom is coming.

But here we are stumped. Who can deny the enormousness of the questions that now confront us? Sometimes it seems as though the Gospel has no real point of contact with our so-called post-Christian era; that indeed the Gospel produces such monumental dissonances when it would talk to the world that there is little chance of its producing meaning.

The Gospel Vs. Our Culture

In previous times a John Wesley, a Charles Finney, or a Henry Drummond could assume that his hearers had some basic presuppositions and an openness of mind that would pave the way for the reception of the Gospel. But what happens when there has been a crucial loss of the conception of God as the One upon whom all things depend? What happens when man’s primal longings for God are covered by a surfeit of exciting things to do and glittering objects to possess? What shall we say when the basic presuppositions of our culture are the opposite of those assumed by the Gospel: when the culture affirms the self-sufficiency of man, while the Gospel says that man can find sufficiency only in God; when the culture says man is essentially good, while the Gospel says he is a sinner before God and in need of salvation; when the culture generally behaves as if this life were the only one, while the Gospel asserts that there is life beyond this one and that there will be a time of final consummation when the entire universe will find its judgment or redemption in God?

Small wonder that indirect, non-verbal methods of witnessing the Gospel have become the order of the day for many Christians. It is so much easier to be a friend to a shy, homesick freshman on the limited issue of his homesickness than to reveal one’s deep spiritual concern for him.

Surprisingly enough, the institutionalized church may have little help for the non-professional laity at this point. This comes to light when we turn our attention to some of the new patterns of ministry to the world which the organized church is undertaking. Consider three examples. There is an unusual coffeehouse in Washington, D.C., that is operated by members of a unique ecumenical church in the city. In San Francisco a “night minister,” a clergyman with fifteen years of pastoral experience, wanders the streets of the Tenderloin district nightly from ten o’clock to early morning, making himself available to any persons who need help. In a Baltimore shopping center anyone interested may step beyond a reception desk into a chapel to pray. Descriptions of all three of these new patterns of church work specifically disclaim any efforts to convert the people involved; the object rather is to be helpful, to listen, and to serve.

So when the institutionalized church makes a gargantuan effort to break out of the confines of its conventional ministry, it too is in the embarrassing situation of not knowing how to be completely true to itself. It too takes the easy route and settles for humanitarianism. But can we even imagine the Apostle Paul trying to “help people” while remaining silent about the Gospel? Indeed, the Gospel was the help he could offer, the key to renewal and the transformed life. “How shall they hear without a preacher?” was his cry, and it applies to men today just as in Paul’s time.

By definition the Church is really the Church only when it is proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ in word as well as deed. Kindly deeds, attitudes of acceptance, and corporate social action are incomplete ways of witnessing the Christian faith; they say little to many persons except that we are responsible, concerned human beings.

The problem of using religious language effectively in our secularly saturated culture is an agonizing one, posing seemingly insuperable difficulties. But we shall have made a giant step forward when we at least recognize the problem, when we no longer ignore it and remain silent about it. Who knows what might be done if, God helping, we were to attack the problem with one mind?

Scandal In The Churches

The second thing the Church must do before it is ready to go into the world is to go into the Church. Our greatest problem by far is an internal one; solve that and the other problems will, by and large, be untangled. It is reasonably certain that vast numbers of church members could not witness to their faith if they wanted to because they have no genuine faith. The scandal of the methods employed by Protestants in receiving new members into their churches is well known. Requiring a minimum of knowledge and commitment, the Church slips its candidates comfortably, smoothly into membership and often for years manages to hide from them the exciting content of the Christian Gospel. The Church is seen by many as a nice ethical society that regularly practices a few interesting rituals and stands by to offer special resources for weddings, illnesses, and death.

The mystifying thing is that although religious leaders are generally aware of this basic problem, they still talk, apparently seriously, about the need to send the laity out into the world to serve the Church. What laity are they talking about, anyway? Certainly the bulk of the laity in our churches today is by no means ready to undertake such a revolutionary role. The laity must be converted before it can be the People of God in the world.

Nor could any theological renaissance in itself guarantee such a result, even if it were to surge across the entire land and invade every church, although it certainly could give essential aid. There is an absolute difference between knowing about God and knowing God. For the latter is conversion when it occurs in a total fashion, involving the feelings, mind, and will.

Let us think for a moment what could happen if all—or most—church members were converted to Christianity, a kind of Christianity similar in commitment to that reported in the New Testament. In the first place, there are now such hordes of Americans holding membership in Christian churches that just on the basis of numbers Christians could in this changed situation make the culture, rather than be made by it! In 1850, the first year an official religious membership survey was taken in our country, only 17 per cent of the population held church or synagogue membership; in 1900 the figure had grown to 36 per cent; and in 1963 (the last year reported) the figure was the highest on record—64 per cent.

With this figure in mind, we must concede that the anti-Christian, secularist presuppositions that possess our present culture could never maintain the undisputed control they hold if they did not have the support of vast numbers of church members. On the other hand, the potential power for good held by the Church today is staggering to consider.

Concepts In Common

In the second place, the problem of religious language would be largely conquered in this theoretical situation of Christianized Christians, because concepts such as sin, grace, sovereignty, and redemption would be discussed freely and understood by the majority of the nation’s citizens. Possibly some new terms would replace a few of the old ones; but since the nature of man and God remain constant, the new terms would have to carry similar meanings.

Doctors, lawyers, sociologists, physicists, and many other groups have their specialized vocabularies; religion must have its also. This has always been true and will continue to be so. Religious language is currently in dire difficulty, both because Christians have at times misused their terms and thus covered them with negative connotations and because the vast majority of Christians have simply defaulted on learning and using in a natural, normal fashion their own specialized vocabulary. All of this could be changed with revitalized Christianity.

Third, if most Christians became Christians then the problem of going into the world would be greatly simplified. Christians are, and always have been, in the world most of their waking hours. They are at work or at play; they are shopping or going to school; they are engaged in all kinds of activities in the world. They have been accused of hiding in their safe churches, but this is not actually true. Unfortunately most churches stand empty most of the time. Christians at last deeply committed to their faith would, hopefully, not have to be coaxed into sharing their faith with the world about them, although they might well need help in learning how to witness most effectively to non-Christians.

Admittedly these last few paragraphs have moved so far away from the present situation that they have an aura of fantasy. Yet this kind of talk is scarcely less fantastic than that which urges non-Christian Christians to go into the world as the People of God. The central problem of church renewal is converting Christians.

Christianity and Democracy in the United States

A Theological Interpretation of American History, by C. Gregg Singer (Craig Press, 1964, 305 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by William Spoelhof, president, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The subject of this book is a significant one. Although there have been many earlier discussions of the religious influences, particularly of Calvin and Calvinism, on the formation of the American political system, this volume is a first to give a long overdue, modern, comprehensive treatment of a Christian interpretation of American history.

Professor Singer rejects as invalid, though helpful, attempts to find the key to the interpretation of American history in the influence of the frontier, or in the development of the democratic dream, or in economic or intellectual drives; he himself finds the key in the theological and philosophical connotations of historical forces. He asserts that only from the Christian perspective can American history be correctly interpreted. Christian historians will, of course, agree with this theme. However, since he calls his work a “theological” rather than a “religious” or “Christian” interpretation, the author could be said to be pressing a thesis rather than following a theme. The title is suited to the broad strokes with which he works.

Singer, taking his stance in twentieth-century, orthodox Calvinism (a bias the reviewer shares), appears to identify this later perspective with the Puritan brand. From this point of view he argues that in the stream of American history, deviations from the Puritan dream in the direction of democratic forms and reforms are deliberate attacks on orthodox Calvinism and represent an espousal of self-defeating liberal causes, both theological and political.

Calvinism, according to Singer, in the form of Puritanism, was the dominant force in forming the political thought of colonial America. In this thought the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man were the molding doctrines. The author contends that to a Puritan any concept of government “which placed sovereignty in the hands of the people and which found the origin of government in a human compact was utterly unknown … and in the democratic philosophy with its emphasis on the sovereignty of the people lay a fundamental contradiction to the … sovereignty of God.”

Here lies the crux of Singer’s thesis. It is quite right to judge that humanistic and secularistic popular sovereignty is not Calvinistic and not Christian. But it is quite another matter to suggest that all democracy and popular government or popular reforms are a denial of the sovereignty of God. The signers of the Mayflower Compact did not, for example, recognize this contradiction with the sovereignty of God. True, the Bradford-led Separatists are not Puritan Calvinists in their doctrine. Choose, then, Thomas Hooker to stand next to Cotton, Winthrop the elder, and Davenport (the three Puritans, quoted by Singer, who surely did distrust democracy). Thomas Hooker is a Puritan in good standing, but he represents those in the colony and in England who disliked the oligarchic character of the Boston rulers. True, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which Thomas Hooker helped to formulate, were not democratic in the sense of giving full and equal rights for all inhabitants; but they did assert that government was instituted in the name of the people. In the words of the Orders: “We doe therefore associate and conioyne our selves to be as one Publike State or Commonwealth.” And Thomas Hooker made this clear in a sermon preceding the adoption of the Fundamental Orders, when he declared that “the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people, and, therefore, the choice of magistrates belongs unto the people, by God’s allowance.” This is not popular sovereignty but it is democratic, and it does provide a framework within which democratic forms and reforms can grow.

The author’s too ready identification of almost every democratic trend and popular reform (from abolition of slavery through child labor, women’s rights, prohibition, world peace, social security, and the like) with that secular concept of popular sovereignty which denies the sovereignty of God makes it difficult to accept many of the conclusions of an otherwise admirable theme. No doubt Puritanism and, later, Calvinism opposed the liberalism out of which so much of democracy has grown, and in that sense they are anti-democratic. But, inasmuch as they also oppose inequality and injustice and espouse constitutional government, established under God, by the free consent of the people, Puritanism and Calvinism surely must be seen to be pro-democratic. Singer’s one paragraph and occasional footnote-exceptions to his thesis are not enough to soften its temper.

Singer asserts that deism and unitarianism arose to break the Puritan hegemony over colonial political life. These furnished the basis for the increasingly secularized colonial outlook and for the acceptance of a humanistic conception of democracy. This new development was reflected in the radical and revolutionary character of the American Rebellion and the Declaration of Independence. Singer sees American history as Puritan Calvinism reasserted and enshrined in the Constitution of 1788. From this source Puritanism supplied a continuing influence in American government, but then only in the sense of its being in constant conflict with the rise of secular democracy, which arose out of liberal theological and non-biblical sources.

In bold, vigorous language the author sketches the rise and flow of those theological and philosophical currents which, with inevitable and steady progress, produced a dominantly secularistic, democratic outlook in national affairs. These currents had in common a break with the emphasis on the sovereignty of God and sported an optimistic view of human nature. Thus deism removed the personal God by encapsulating him in his own creation and in natural law. Transcendentalism, arising out of reaction to deism’s cold, rationalistic climate, espoused a God who was part of creation, and thus it fathered a vigorous type of individualism. Its individualism, humanistic to the core, was easily translated into the sovereignty of man, which became its central theme. But it was the radicalism of the movement, asserts Singer, rather than its individualism that triumphed. Closely affiliated with Jacksonian democracy, transcendentalism fathered the reform movements of 1820–60, culminating in the abolition movement and the Civil War. In its humanism and radicalism transcendental philosophy bore close resemblance to the spirit of the New Deal, asserts Singer. The only difference was that transcendental humanism was disguised by a pantheistic idealism, while the New Deal, nurtured by pragmatism, presented itself in unvarnished secularism.

Transcendentalism paved the way for social Darwinism, which after 1870 was the new ally of political radicalism. This was ushered in by the materialistic and scientific temper of the times and by a wave of theological, political, and social radicalism flushed with the triumph of abolition. Singer notes that, while the negative aspect in Darwinian evolution tended to produce the theory that rights belong only to those fit to survive the struggle, its optimistic aspect produced a belief in an evolving, better human society, eventuating in the welfare state. This sociocratic collectivism Singer finds fulfilled in the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the New Frontier state. Social security, medical aid, federal aid to education, and many similar projects, claims Singer, all reflect social Darwinian thought. This new radicalism found expression in the social gospel movement, which discovered a kindred spirit in the rise of the Progressive Republican party of Theodore Roosevelt. The defeat of Progressivism merely shifted the scene to a new wave of theological liberalism, which came into a working alliance with the theorists and politicians of the New Deal, producing a radical social revolution. The decline in radicalism since World War II Singer ascribes to the rise of neo-orthodoxy, with its lack of concern for the historical process. But with it, he observes, came a period in which the voice of Christianity in national affairs was almost stilled. The gradual democratization of American life well-nigh makes necessary “a totalitarian state, virtually infallible.”

Singer concludes with a most important question: “Does orthodoxy have a remedy?” Admittedly sketchy in his reply, he avows that it does but suggests that a separate volume would be needed to present it.

The author’s basic approach is that national issues express the prevailing philosophy at any given point in American history. I believe this to be a good generalization, but it is not always possible to isolate the diverse forces that enter into the determination of national affairs. When Singer asserts that “the dominant philosophy is ultimately the product of a theological climate,” I have difficulty giving full assent. I do believe that the philosophy of an age is the product of a religious climate, because all life is religion; but it is too much to say that all national political, economic, and social developments have a self-conscious theological base. That is claiming too much for the word “theological.”

The author gives a vigorous, persuasive push to his thesis. However, just at the moment the reader receives the impression that every major reform must be judged to be the product of a humanistic secularism, the author in a footnote or brief paragraph reminds the reader that common grace is an important factor in historical interpretation, or that evangelicals did at times justify social reform on the basis of Christian commitment. He could have worked this side much harder.

Singer has broken a path for us. Although I disagree with many of his concrete applications of his thesis and also with some of his far too easy generalizations, the big picture is compelling and true. There is no doubt that American democracy has been secularized. In its secularization, democracy finds its own predicament. By accepting a pragmatic view of fluid law and by fostering the dechristianization of American life through a distorted view of the freedom from religion rather than a freedom of religion, democracy will breach its own bulwarks. Singer calls the Christian to consider always the motivation of his political, social, and economic commitments. We should heed this call and allow these commitments always to arise out of a biblical conception of God’s sovereignty and of man created in the image of God, and of the source and origin of authority, the state, law, and justice. In calling us to this task he has rendered a very important service.

WILLIAM SPOELHOF

Far Right And Deep South

Danger on the Right, by Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein (Random House, 1964, 295 pp., $4.95), and Who Speaks for the South?, by James McBride Dabbs (Funk and Wagnalls, 1964, 398 pp., $5.95), are reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, professor of philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

Danger on the Right professes to be an expose of the forces of conservatism in America. It deals, basically, with what the authors see as the two divisions of the rightist movement in our land. First there is the “radical right,” those who believe in the “conspiracy theory of American history,” which is, that the United States is caught in the toils of a vast plot devised by her leaders (especially those since 1933) to deliver her over to Communism. The other division, termed “extreme conservatism,” consists of those who think that the drift toward collectivism is the result of the naïveté and bungling of blind leaders.

To summarize the chapters written to expose the “radical right” would require several pages. The basic assumption is that all the leaders of this movement are people of bad faith. Their major concern is to utilize tax-exempt privileges for personal gain. Most of them are anti-Semitic, racist, and undemocratic.

No one will deny that there is peril in radicalism of every kind. Not all, however, will agree with the hidden thesis of Forster and Epstein that the danger to American freedom is exclusively from the right. It seems to be taken for granted that just beneath the crust of American life there are rightist forces awaiting an opportunity to take control and to subvert democratic principles. Now, none will doubt that every society has members who resist social change. What is to be questioned is whether this is the major menace to American freedom.

The authors of Danger on the Right have no intimation, it seems, that some of the dynamics of conservatism stem from our earlier lackadaisical attitude toward Communism, and from our obvious national inability during the thirties and forties to cope with Communist imperialism. They say nothing about the days when Joe Lash, apparently with White House approval, held parties on the lawn of our executive mansion for young members of obviously Communist-front groups. They show latent anger at the ability of Frederick Schwarz to come to the United States from Australia and lead an anti-Communist crusade, but show no similar concern about Harry Bridges, who could come to our shores and organize movements to tie up coastal shipping (apparently with the support of Communists of our land), or about the inability of our courts to return him to Australia.

The authors are less one-sided and tendentious in their survey of the “extreme conservatives”; yet they concede no sincerity of motive to those who feel that some curbs should be placed upon the gargantuan growth of government and its increasing and relentless invasion of individual rights. Much is made of the corporations’ donations to conservative movements: the authors assume that because the movements receive such assistance they are automatically damned.

It would have been helpful if authors of equal diligence had surveyed the organizations making up the United Front in the thirties, or had written with equal fervor when leftists were passing on secret defense and technological secrets to the U.S.S.R. Some of the energy spent trying to secure clemency for the Rosenbergs and for Alger Hiss could have been expended advantageously to prevent the frittering away of the fruits of victory in World War II and of the technological advantages that our research during the war gave us. Had this been done, much of the occasion for rightist anxiety might have been avoided.

Who Speaks for the South? seeks to define the South—to create an image of it that will replace the romantic one that has been destroyed by the historians. With the loss of the Cavalier theory, scholars have sought to formulate a new theory of the South based upon a more rational understanding of the Old South; and they frequently speak of “many Souths.”

James M. Dabbs represents the enlightened conscience of a region that has ceased to take itself for granted and that seeks to salvage what is praiseworthy and continuingly valid from a tradition uncertain of itself. He writes pensively, at times almost nostalgically; his outlook is that of the country gentleman. At the same time, he is astute enough to see that the Negro is also a Southerner. He traces the forces that have made the Negro what he is, as well as those that have molded the white Southerner.

Against the “many Souths” theory, he sees the emergence of a unitary quality of South-ness. He repudiates the view that the Southerner is a tragic character; it was as a good-natured and relaxed person, he says, that the Southerner met his tragedy. True, our author feels that the Southerner did not quite deserve all that happened to him—and with this all of us would agree.

The book is valuable for its keen insights into the way an enlightened person views life about him. Dabbs appreciates the role of the Church in the life of the South. He is neither a romantic nor a cynic. He is perhaps less romantic than W. J. Cash (The Mind of the South), but his work embodies, we think, more careful analysis.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Social Righteousness

He Gave Some Prophets: The Old Testament Prophets and Their Message, by Sanford Calvin Yoder (Herald, 1964, 252 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Gordon R. Lewis, professor of theology, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

He who would speak prophetically in an immoral age should read this book. Its hard-hitting ethical and spiritual challenge will suggest a desperately needed series of sermons or Bible studies. Any defender of justification by faith who fears the Gospel’s social and political implications must consider the wealth of Scripture here expounded.

Author of six other books, Dr. Sanford C. Yoder (S.T.D., Gordon Divinity School; D.D., Northern Baptist Theological Seminary) has been a pastor and bishop of the Mennonite Church, a professor of Bible, and president of Goshen College. As the fitting consummation of a lengthy ministry, He Gave Some Prophets was published on the writer’s eighty-fifth birthday.

Briefly and readably Dr. Yoder has fulfilled his purpose as far as ethical matters are concerned. He sets forth the content of the Old Testament prophetic books in the historical, geographic, political, and religious setting out of which they came. Although he draws upon critical studies, he makes only brief allusions to them. Similarly, this evangelical writer minimizes doctrinal problems. An advocate of literal interpretation, he nevertheless bypasses the millennial issue and includes no chart of eschatological events. The prophetic message in the highest sense, he finds, is ethical, spiritual, and practical. The priests took care of the ritual; the prophets sought personal and national righteousness. “What the prophets tried to bring about was repentance, justice, honesty and truth, without which all sacrifices, offerings, and ceremonies are vain.” The prophets were “first of all preachers of righteousness who spoke to the people and problems of their day.”

And problems there were! In high places, as well as in low, Old Testament prophets confronted people who sought ultimate security in military strength and strong walls, formed alliances with ungodly nations, bribed officials, flattered the rich, took inherited property by force, drank from morning to night, got their neighbors drunk to look at their nakedness, shamelessly practiced immorality in broad daylight and in places set apart to the Lord, gloated over others’ misfortunes, plundered and murdered, called good evil and evil good, said one thing and did another, loved to listen to false prophets, spoke much of love but in their hearts coveted, oppressed the poor in order to live in luxury, married the ungodly, violated marriage commitments, failed to train children in the things of God, took pride in their own works, hypocritically made a show of worshiping God but like spiritual harlots worshiped idols.

Our remarkably similar times cry out for the message of the prophets! And from the prophets we should learn. Although they spoke to the problems of their day, they also spoke, Yoder emphasizes, to the ages. They dealt with eternal truth and therefore have a message for us. The author concludes each chapter with relevant contemporary applications.

Many of the prophets were like Jonah, hesitant to announce the divine judgment upon sinners. But they did announce it, basing their indictments on a vision of God’s holiness and universal moral government. What a man sows he will reap. God may use one nation to chastise another. Corrupt nations cannot stand. Their doom is certain. Judgment will fall upon all unrighteousness. “Each generation must learn, so it seems, for itself that authority or power, violence or might are not the final forces that man has to deal with. Nor do man’s rationalizations constitute the answer to his problems. Only the truth and righteousness that is of God abides.”

Repent! the prophets cry. Put on sackcloth and ashes, fast and pray! Individuals who acknowledge their sins and turn from their wicked ways may be forgiven. The just shall live by faith—not by ten thousands of sacrifices. Yoder writes, “Righteousness is a personal matter and evil is a personal problem. It always was. It is high time that every person from the head of the nation to the most humble one on the field or street … should become concerned with the things that have to do with our relationship to our Maker and the age-old and time-honored principles that have to do with life and faith and character, rather than with armaments, amusements, shorter hours, and higher economic levels.”

By and large people spurned the prophets, but the prophets did not despair. They hoped in God, who overrules and brings to naught the devices of evil men. God’s plan will not fail. One day a redeemer will appear. Redemption comes, not from mighty men, but from the suffering servant of God. The apparent futility of life turns into joyful anticipation by faith in the promised Messiah. Immanuel will bring not only spiritual redemption and rehabilitation but also physical and political deliverance. An era of peace will be realized when the Lord is king over all the world and righteousness covers the earth as water covers the sea.

Let none identify these themes with a merely social gospel. And let none miss the necessity of individual and social righteousness as the fruit of faith!

GORDON R. LEWIS

Mary And History

Mary, Mother of the Redemption. by Edward Schillebeeckx, O. P. (Sheed and Ward, 1964, 175 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, Christianity Today.

I can recommend this book as a lucid presentation of the Roman Catholic theology of Mary. In this tradition, Mary is understood as the proper human response to God’s redemption in Christ. She is the perfect embodiment of the Old Testament anticipation of the coming Messiah, and the ideal form of the Church’s acceptance of Christ and its willingness to suffer sacrificially for his redemptive purposes. Mary’s response, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word,” and her perpetual virginity express the required “open receptiveness” to God’s coming in Christ and that “free consent” to be saved by Christ and to fulfill sacrificially the sufferings of Christ for the salvation of the world. Mary perfectly provides that “human cooperation” which is the sine qua non of all human salvation, and she is thus a “co-redeemer” with Christ and a picture of the Church.

What Mary docs is regarded as absolutely essential; without her action there would be no salvation. Furthermore, her perfect response to God is the response made (though imperfectly) by every person who is saved by Christ.

Her perfect response to God in Christ, while meritorious, is nonetheless defined in Roman Catholic thought as wholly the consequence of God’s grace.

Protestants generally, particularly those of the Reformed tradition, regard this as an infringement on salvation “by grace alone.” Schillebeeckx is wholly aware of this objection, for he asserts that Protestants “misinterpret” Mary’s “essential maternal quality, by denying man’s personal, meritorious cooperation in his salvation.” Protestantism generally, and especially in its most authentic forms, denies that the act by which a person becomes a Christian can be both wholly a gracious act of God and a meritorious human act. For them grace wholly excludes merit, and they seem to have on their side Paul, who says that if salvation is of works it is no more of grace. Yet Protestants can scarcely brush aside this aspect of Mariology with an imperial sweep of the hand. They who believe that a human decision precedes the moment of becoming a Christian have, in fact, no sure defense against this aspect of the Marian doctrine. And the notion that Adam in a “covenant of works” could have earned eternal life by obedience in the garden fringes on the same doctrine. Moreover, both Protestants and Roman Catholics face the biblical teaching that the good works of believers are rewarded by God, and the Protestant explanation that the reward is one of grace, not merit, is not exactly crystal clear.

Beside the motif of “human co-operation” there is another that shapes the Marian doctrine. Roman Catholics emphasize that Protestants misunderstand the Marian doctrine and as a result do not wholly see the very human, historical aspect of the Incarnation. Schillebeeckx, a Belgian who currently teaches at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, says that Protestants do not really perceive the truth that God became human in history and miss that humane and mellow, that tender aspect of the Incarnation that is revealed in Mary.

It is doubtless true that traditional Protestantism has not been sufficiently sensitive to the humanity of Christ and to the historical character of the Christian revelation; yet Protestants are convinced that this can be overcome, not by diverting attention to Mary, but by riveting greater attention on the humanity of Christ.

Protestants would quite agree with Schillebeeckx that the Roman Catholic dogmatic vision of Mary is quite different from the gospel image of Mary. Most of them, I think, would also feel that the Marian doctrine described in this book is not only largely extra-biblical but also highly scholastic and abstract, indeed so abstract as to challenge that authentic historicity and concrete humanity which the Marian doctrine is supposed to maintain.

Mary is said to put the spotlight on the historical, down-to-earth, humane character of the Incarnation of God in Christ. Yet to achieve this function Mary, in Roman Catholic thought, is said to have been immaculately conceived, that is, free from sin and herself not a sinner; to have retained her virginity; and to have been bodily assumed into heaven. All this would seem to take her out of history, or more exactly, to render her a kind of feminine Geschichte who touches our history only at some points. She seems to have been redeemed and rendered perfect before she enters history; she is said to be redeemed by Christ, though never to have been a sinner in history. This would hardly seem to qualify Mary for the function of being a manifestation of the historicity of the Incarnation. Christ, at least, became sin for us in history.

Protestants who give some thought to theology could profitably read this book. The first part gives some fine biblical insights into the truth about Mary. In the light of the biblical teaching about Mary, some Protestants might be led to ask themselves when they last called her “blessed.” For the rest, Protestants will discover that the Marian doctrine is very alien to their thought and spirituality, but that it nonetheless does grapple with some basic biblical motifs with which they themselves also struggle, and not always successfully.

JAMES DAANE

A Nettlesome Subject

Suffering: A Christian Understanding, by Merrill Proudfoot (Westminster, 1964, 194 pp., $5), is reviewed by C. Ralston Smith, minister, First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

For the twentieth-century American, suffering is to a large extent theoretical. Our lack of understanding of the word is demonstrated in our cheapening of it. The slightest test, the least discomfort, we now describe as “a traumatic experience.” In fact, it seems almost agnostic, not to say unpatriotic, to suggest that the experience of suffering should be part of our existence.

In this volume Dr. Proudfoot confronts us with the fact that Christians can expect to be brought under the limitations of weakness and trial for the fulfillment of the life of discipleship and for the strengthening of that body of faith which is the Church. On the fly-leaf introduction, his book is referred to as “many-dimensioned.” This well epitomizes the book’s approach. The Apostle Paul is chosen as a worthy example and as a reliable authority on the nature and meaning of suffering. It is a real testimony to the relevance of the scriptural record that Paul is so useful to us—even in this gadget-triggered time—as we contemplate the problem of suffering.

The book is carefully wrought. The text is preceded by a helpful foreword that gives in embryo the theses to be expounded, and is concluded with a splendid yet brief review of the ground covered. And in the text, a carefully segmented argument follows a clear and adequate outline. An addenda of ten pages of notes and index shows careful work; indeed, the notes are interesting enough to make the inconvenience of flipping the pages back and forth worthwhile!

The Christian view of suffering as represented by Paul is compared with three other views: rejection, retribution, and relishment. These are illustrated by personalities and philosophies both past and present. The Greek, Hebrew, and early Christian cultures are typified in a treatment I found very refreshing. The research into the lives of the selected representatives is most informative, and the contemporary examples are relevant and familiar.

The author does not hesitate to differ severely with some of the popular figures of our time. Yet his approach is completely without rancor. He does not take advantage of his privileged position, nor does he compromise. I sense that his position on the historical reliability of the Scriptures is more liberal than mine, and his devotion to the various “church and society” emphases is quite apparent. These things, however, are neither in poor taste nor detrimental to the effectiveness of his presentation.

In short, I found this stimulating treatment of a nettlesome subject engaging, and I recommend a twice-through perusal.

C. RALSTON SMITH

Synopsis Of Critical Thought

Interpreting the Old Testament, by Walter Harrelson (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 529 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by R. Laird Harris, professor of Old Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

It was evidently the author’s purpose to write a book for the serious layman that would give him access to recent studies and discoveries and thus help him to understand the Old Testament. The book is indeed a readable and extensive work. It has an appendix giving the documentary divisions of the Pentateuch, a glossary of terms, a large bibliography that includes many foreign works, indices, and four good maps as end papers. Dr. Harrelson, formerly dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School, is now professor of Bible at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He is well known in Old Testament study.

After brief general observations he touches on the canon and text of the Old Testament. His view of the canon is the usual three-fold development theory long standard in critical circles, although he dates the books of his third division much earlier than was formerly done. The Dead Sea Scrolls necessitate this change. A few words are said on textual criticism; then the books are considered individually—their origin, composition, date, and contents. He hardly leaves a single book of the Old Testament intact. But his approach is not that of the older Driver-Wellhausen school; rather he shows considerable agreement with Alt and Noth (p. 34).

There are innumerable points to which a conservative would react, such as the idea that the story of Jacob’s wrestling comes from a legend of a “demon” of the Jabbok ford (p. 63); Zipporah’s circumcision of her son also comes from an old tale of a demon of the wedding night (p. 80); Elijah’s pouring water on the altar at Carmel comes from a rain-making ceremony (p. 205); Jonah is a fable—written during the exile (p. 318); no Psalm can “with any certainty” be attributed to David (p. 408). No Old Testament miracle or long-range prophecy is allowed to be true. Of the 293 works listed in the bibliography, perhaps three are conservative!

There are also a number of disturbing inaccuracies in treating new material, of which we can mention only a few. Harrelson says that Hazor fell to Joshua at about 1200 B.C. but that it was reestablished—against archaeological evidence—at the time of Barak’s campaign (p. 134). It would be better to equate an earlier destruction with Joshua’s. Also, he emphasizes the annual death and resurrection of Tammuz (p. 296), although it is now known that Tammuz remained in the underworld. He charges Daniel with error in speaking of a captivity by Nebuchadnezzar in 606–605 B.C. (p. 458), but Wiseman’s publication of the Chronicles of Nebuchadnezzar shows that he “conquered the whole area of the Hatti land” that very year. Askelon is later mentioned as included under this geographical designation.

The book is thus far from satisfactory, but it is recommended as a convenient synopsis of critical thought today.

R. LAIRD HARRIS

For Profit And Delight

The English Reformation, by A. G. Dickens (Schocken, 1964, 384 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, professor of church history and historical theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

For the theologian or church historian it is always interesting and refreshing to turn to the work of non-theological historians, especially when they are dealing with a theme within the ecclesiastical province. A special interest thus attaches to this new account of the English Reformation by Professor Dickens, for his concern is with a period of intense church-state interaction, and he has already published many monographs on ecclesiastical as well as political, economic, and social aspects of the Tudor period. The more general volume is thus in every way a work of church history, though written from the perspective of one whose work is not narrowly oriented to this field.

In content, the study embraces a vast area. Beginning with a brief sketch of the medieval, Lollard, and Lutheran background, it passes through the Henrician and Edwardian phases, by way of the Marian reaction, to the Elizabethan Settlement. The shape of things to come is indicated by a concluding delineation of Puritanism, not just in the more technical doctrinaire or separatist forms but as a broad movement within the Anglican world.

With the march of ecclesiastical events, Professor Dickens finds ample scope to present some of the recent findings of the intensive social and economic research in which he has played a notable part. He also has a lively taste for the anecdotes in which the period abounds, and can point a moral of his own. Thus, telling us of the pudding handed to one of Mary’s perambulating prebendaries, he remarks that while it was no doubt given by a ribald Protestant, “it would have been still more fitting had it come from a percipient Catholic” (p. 280). Nor is he afraid of an unpopular judgment. He certainly attempts no justification of infamous Northumberland, but he makes out a credible case for some religious sincerity on the part of Thomas Cromwell.

When he comes to more directly theological or polemical matters, his views are worth noting. Of the Forty-two Articles he points out that, while they express the medial position of the new church, “yet it is chiefly medial between Rome and the Anabaptists, rather than between Rome and the Calvinists or … Lutherans” (p. 252). The eucharistic teaching of the Anglican Reformers gives him some trouble, and here the specialists with their conflicting interpretations are little help. The ghost of Zwingli (surely laid by the Consensus Tigurinus) unduly haunts the scene. Failure to understand the Reformed position expressed in the Consensus confounds confusion. The estimation of Puritanism is more balanced than one often finds today. Indeed, Professor Dickens shows a considerable appreciation for the Reformation as a whole, though his final observations on the “proper plane” of theology, namely, that it should be that of “hypothesis,” indicate an ultimate lack of understanding of what so theological a movement as the Reformation was really all about.

Nevertheless, the merits and importance of the work are plain to see. A masterly grasp of this complex and formative movement is displayed. If the theme is comprehensive, the treatment is authoritative and concise. If the story is tangled, there is a sure indication of the guiding threads. If generalized statements are necessary, they are made on the basis of solid and often original research. The result is a work that all students of the English Reformation, and all who value its heritage in English-speaking lands, will read with profit and delight.

G. W. BROMILEY

Book Briefs

Trials, Tragedies and Triumphs, by R. Earl Allen (Revell, 1965, 160 pp., §2.95). Twenty-one evangelical sermonettes on the seven words of the Cross.

Go Home and Tell, by Bertha Smith (Broadman, 1965, 154 pp., $2.75; also paper, $1.25). A missionary in the Orient for forty-two years gives an interesting account of mission work in China and Formosa.

The Kingdom of God Today, by Otto Karrer (Herder and Herder, 1964, 255 pp., $4.95). A Roman Catholic theological discussion of high caliber and wide range, with an ecumenical concern.

Christian Sex Ethics, by V. A. Dernant (Harper and Row, 1965, 127 pp., $2.75). For the person who really wants to think about sex.

Torches Together: The Beginnings and Early Years of the Bruderhof Communities, by Emmy Arnold (Plough, 1964, 222 pp., $3.50).

Your Future Is Your Friend: An Inspirational Pilgrimage through the Twenty-third Psalm, by Robert Harold Schuller (Eerdmans, 1964, 98 pp., $2.50). By the drive-in church pastor of Garden Grove, California.

Archaeology in Biblical Research, by Walter G. Williams (Abingdon, 1965, 244 pp., $4.75). Informative and readable.

Egermeier’s Favorite Bible Stories, new edition, by Elsie E. Egermeier, adapted by Dorothy Nicholson (Warner, 1965, 128 pp., $2.95).

Love and Marriage in the Spirit, by Eberhard Arnold (Plough, 1964, 239 pp., $4). Very interesting, informative, and sometimes questionable views of marriage and the Church, delivered originally, during the Hitler years, at the Rhon Bruderhof in Hesse, Germany.

The Lord’s Prayers, by Elton Trueblood (Harper and Row, 1965, 128 pp., $2.50). Trueblood presents a provocative discussion of prayers the Lord prayed (not the Lord’s Prayer) and those he suggested as prayers for others.

The Existence of God, by Wallace I. Matson (Cornell University, 1965, 254 pp., $4.95). A teacher of philosophy at the University of California (Berkeley) asserts that God is an ideal, who, if he existed, would be an idol. He admits he himself is only “flesh and blood,” but he is quite confident that there is no reason to believe that God exists.

What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr,, by Lerone Bennett, Jr. (Johnson, 1964, 237 pp., $4.95). An absorbing story of the struggles and achievements of America’s most popular civil rights leader.

Paperbacks

A Time to Embrace, edited by Oliver R. Barclay (Inter-Varsity, 1964, 61 pp., 2s.). Six essays on the Christian view of sex. Dr. Barclay affirms that Christians cannot rely merely on a rule-of-thumb morality that may lead to a legalistic outlook, and here discusses the question of what can be substituted.

The Five Books of Moses, by Oswald T. Allis (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964, 356 pp., $3.50). A re-examination of the modern theory that the Pentateuch is a late compilation from diverse and conflicting sources by authors and editors whose identity is completely unknown.

New Testament Detection, by W. Gordon Robinson (Oxford, 1964, 269 pp., $4.50). The author identifies people, searches out places, tracks down words, and considers evidence in the New Testament. A valuable and useful study.

Presbyterian Heritage, by A. Mervyn Davies (John Knox, 1965, 144 pp., $1.95). A pleasantly readable account of the history of Presbyterianism in Great Britain, on the Continent, and in America by a former staff member of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Called to the Ministry, by Edmund P. Clowney (Westminster Theological Seminary, 1964, 90 pp., $1.25). A serious and helpful discussion of what it means to be called to the Christian ministry. A brief but valuable contribution.

Prologue to Prison: Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, by Richard C. Halverson (Cowman, 1964, 252 pp., $1.95). A very lucid, readable, step-by-step commentary on Romans.

Ecumenical Theology Today, edited by Gregory Baum, O. S. A. (Paulist Press, 1964, 256 pp., $.95). A delightful series of brief essays by Roman Catholics and Protestants (many by editor Gregory Baum) on many ecumenical matters, including the Jews and “What Are Other Churches?”

Kierkegaard and Bultmann: The Quest of the Historical Jesus, by Herbert C. Wolf (Augsburg, 1965, 100 pp., $1.95). An attempt to compare and contrast Kierkegaard and Bultmann’s views of the relation of faith and history.

Reprints

Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening Devotions from the Bible, by Charles H. Spurgeon (Baker, 1964, 784 pp., $5.95). Originally published under the title The Interpreter.

The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, by Henry Barclay Swete (Baker, 1964, 417 pp., $6.95). A scholarly, biblical exposition. First printed in 1910.

Great Personalities of the Bible, by William Sanford LaSor (Revell, 1965, 384 pp., $5.95). The author treats a chain of personalities whose stories constitute the thread of the whole Bible. Well done; most of the material appeared earlier in two volumes.

The Twenty-Third Psalm, by John McNeill (Revell, 1965, 94 pp., $1.95). Devotional reading with a glow. First printed in 1927.

In 1850 a symposium called Essays and Reviews was published in England. The ecclesiastical world was slow to sense the implications of its advocacy of free enquiry in religious matters till Bishop Samuel Wilberforce launched a scathing attack on it. Thereafter the bishops as a body condemned it, legal action was taken against two of the essayists, and 11,000 clergy “declared their belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the eternity of punishment.”

About the same time, 5,000 miles away, the Cambridge-educated Bishop of Natal, John William Colenso, was denying eternal punishment in his new commentary on Romans; and in 1862 he raised an even greater furor when he published the first part of The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined, in which he questioned traditional authorship and historical accuracy. Colenso’s metropolitan would have succeeded in having him deposed but for a legal technicality.

These were more than merely Anglican wrangles, for this was the age when the Christian Church was still confronted with the effects of J. S. Mill’s utilitarianism, Auguste’s Comte’s Religion of Humanity, and the radicalism of F. C. Baur and D. F. Strauss. John Newman found a refuge in Rome. So did W. G. Ward. Some evangelicals ignored the problems and continued to fight their battles in fields where issues and enemies could be clearly espied.

Other brethren of the conservative school, however, saw the pressing need for Christians to face squarely the new philosophical and scientific problems. So was born the Victoria Institute, or Philosophical Society of Great Britain, which this year celebrates its centenary. Its chief moving spirit and first honorary secretary, James Reddie, proposed its objects thus; “to recognise no human science as ‘established,’ but to examine philosophically and freely all that has passed as science, or is put forward as science … whilst its members, having accepted Christianity as the revealed truth of God, will defend that truth against all mere human theories by subjecting them to the most rigid tests and criticisms.” The founders of the new society, says Mr. T. F. C. Stunt (to whose newly finished history I am indebted for much of this material), “believed in the oneness of knowledge, and expected empirical observation and deduction to harmonise with revealed truth.” Lord Shaftesbury presided over the society for its first twenty-one years, though he had a low view of his own intellectual capacity. “I feel,” he said, “very much like a hen that has hatched an eagle, which is now soaring aloft beyond my reach.”

The society has never been unanimous on a particular interpretation of Scripture: the first paper heard by members denied incompatibility between evolution and the biblical creation account. While this has always been a minority view, two of its opponents some years later criticized a paper which assumed that Darwinism was “in a priori antagonism with revelation.” They held it was “in a period of probation.” Mr. Stunt suggests that the society failed at that time to face the challenge of unbelieving philosophy and seemed unconcerned about the lack of Christian impact on the world.

Then came a phase when the institute’s chief preoccupation was archaeological research, with some of the most distinguished archaeologists participating, including Sir Wallis Budge, Sir Flinders Petrie, Professor A. H. Sayce, and Sir William Ramsay. But there were scholars of equal caliber in other fields. One of the society’s presidents was Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Cambridge mathematics professor, Member of Parliament, and president of the Royal Society. Another member was Lord Kelvin, the renowned physicist.

In the first quarter of the present century, papers were given by eminent astronomers such as Professor A. S. Eddington and Sir Frank Dyson (Astronomer Royal). Edward Maunder, secretary of the Astronomical Society, became also the institute’s secretary and in 1916 maintained that recent discoveries confirmed the Pauline word: “The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead.”

A famous churchman was Professor Henry Wace, later Dean of Canterbury, whose early contributions had been in the philosophical field, at that time the weakest and most neglected. His later papers concentrated on the principles of biblical criticism, for he was greatly disturbed by the general acceptance of the claims of the German critics which, he maintained, were quite unproven. It was a timely word against a baneful influence, particularly on young ministers.

… here wi’ Science, there wi’ Doot

He crams his sermons;

Thrawin’ the plainest text aboot

To please the Germans.

Throughout the jubilee addresses in 1915 was a note of concern at the state of the world. Four years later, after the peace treaty had been signed, the society’s report said, “There is no truce in the war with the powers of evil. Unbelief in the form of destructive criticism is unwearied in its efforts to discredit the authority of the Holy Scriptures for the defence of which the Victoria Institute stands.…”

Sir Frederick Kenyon, for twenty-one years director of the British Museum, was another notable president. He believed that Christians should meet left-wing criticism and defeat it on its own grounds rather than try to prove the Bible from archaeology; moreover, he thought it right to recognize that critics were “legitimately raising questions which require investigation.”

Old topics still keep cropping up in new form. A paper on Matthew Arnold in 1878 has similarities with issues raised today by the Bishop of Woolwich: Christianity,

Arnold was quoted as saying, “must abandon her creeds … as the product of ‘popular’ or ‘theological science’.…” When Dean Inge after World War I spoke on “Freedom and Discipline,” he remarked that we should not be surprised that “the Vatican was backing Germany all over the world.” Today, with another world war behind us, Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Representative, which created such a storm, made the same-point.

Our needs today are not ultimately so very different from those of an earlier generation, and the aims of the Victoria Institute are as pertinent now as they were a century ago. This can be seen even in the title of this year’s open prize essay (worth £40); “The Relevance of Christian Truth in a Modern Age.”

Britain’s foremost evangelical biblical scholar, Professor F. F. Bruce, has just vacated the presidential chair of the institute and has been succeeded by a distinguished scientist, Professor R. L. F. Boyd of London University.

All over the world the Roman Catholic Church is changing its attitude toward the Bible.

In the countries of East Africa, for example, CHRISTIANITY TODAY News Correspondent Tom Houston reports that the Catholic hierarchy is cooperating in a number of Bible-society translation projects. In one recent safari, a Bible-society agent sold more Bibles to Roman Catholic missionary organizations than to Protestants.

But this apparent new openness to the Scriptures must be seen against the backdrop of liberal Catholic scholars who now speak freely of alleged myths in the Bible. Docs an element of Catholic leadership feel that it can afford to let its people have the Scriptures because with a weakened view of authority there is not much to fear?

Father Roland Devaux, a leading Bible scholar, sees the Scriptures as a common ground for ecumenism: “The Bible is the field on which we parted several centuries ago and is now the field where we can meet most easily.”

Many evangelicals feel that whatever the motive, more attention to the Bible has great potential for reform. Perhaps the most remarkable Catholic attitude toward the Bible is seen in Mexico. The following is a report prepared for CHRISTIANITY TODAY by Pat H. Carter:

Father Manuel Molina, president of the Catholic Bible Society of Mexico, has a double ambition: to place a Bible in every Catholic home and to make the Bible the center of faith and practice in his church.

Molina began to attract national attention in September, 1962, when he sponsored the first Catholic National Day of the Bible. In the Cathedral of Cuernavaca, images were removed and biblical texts placed on the pulpits, the altar, and the ciborium (vessel holding the eucharistic bread). Protestant ministers were recognized as honored guests in a special service.

Molina travels across Mexico selling Bibles and teaching priests to organize home Bible classes. Apprehension among conservative Catholics and controversy among evangelicals swirl in his wake.

Molina decided early in life to dedicate himself “to a rediscovery of the Bible among Catholics. And I was determined to remain a Catholic. This revival must come within the church.” He has served in the priesthood in Spain, Brazil, and Argentina. When transferred to Mexico he gained support to begin a national movement.

A short, spectacled man, Molina is a skillful public speaker who spices his lectures with homely anecdotes. He illustrates his church’s attitude toward the Bible with the story of “Pancho,” the migrant worker who wrote regularly to his wife, Rosa, and included his salary check. Rosa always rushed out to cash the checks. But although she conserved the letters carefully, she never got around to reading them. The Roman Catholic Church is like Rosa, says Molina. The Bible contains her “letters from the Lord.” Through the years she has carefully extracted the “checks,” such as the Magnificat of Mary and the Lord’s Prayer. The Bible itself she has conserved unread in a place of honor.

Molina tells fellow clerics that the church’s neglect of the Bible is the chief reason for the surge of Protestantism in Latin America. “They who say the Bible is dangerous are burros (asses). It is written for all, the educated as well as the ignorant.”

He meticulously avoids offensive references to Protestants. But this has not saved his evangelical friends from sharp criticism. Roberto Porras, president of the Bible Society of Mexico, is also executive secretary of the National Baptist Convention. A group of Baptist ministers initiated an ouster movement in 1963 when Porras accepted an invitation to sell “Protestant Bibles” in the Cathedral of Cuernavaca. The controversy was intensified upon publication of a letter in which Porras addressed Molina as “brother.”

Molina scoffs at the suggestion that his movement is in any way similar to the Reformation. He insists that the modern Roman Catholic Church, unlike that of the sixteenth century, is “always in perfect renovation.”

Protestant Panorama

The Lutheran Church in America is preparing a booklet which asks congregations to eliminate “commercialism” in card parties, bazaars, games of chance, dinners, and sales. The church’s Commission on Stewardship has called for “a move toward the development of other means of publicity and interpretation so that commercial activities can be abandoned as rapidly as possible.”

The Rt. Rev. John E. Hines, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, sent a letter to all U. S. Senators urging them to approve quickly the United Nations conventions on genocide, slavery, forced labor, and the political rights of women. The letters follow up a resolution by the Episcopal General Convention last year which expressed support of U. S. ratification of the conventions.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville is establishing a professorship in evangelism in honor of Billy Graham. Dr. Kenneth Chafin, presently the head of the Department of Evangelism at South western Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, has been elected to occupy the chair. It will be known as the Billy Graham Chair of Evangelism and will be financed for the first three years by a grant of $30,000 from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. A permanent endowment of $500,000 will be sought to support the professorship, to maintain the Billy Graham materials housed in the seminary library, and to assist in a field program of evangelism to be guided and directed by the professor.

Miscellany

Dr. Carl McIntire and his associates secured Federal Communications Commission approval last month to purchase control of a Media, Pennsylvania, radio station. Five of the six FCC members approved the transaction, having been given assurances that McIntire would adhere to the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” on controversial issues. Opposition to the transfer had been voiced by a number of religious groups (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, February 12, 1965).

The crash of a small private plane in western Tanzania February 26 claimed the lives of a Danish program coordinator of the Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service, his three-year-old daughter, and a Tanzanian game officer. The Dane, Jorgen Norredam, 44, had given up a position in Copenhagen as general secretary of the Royal Danish Automobile Club to join the TCRS last June. The TCRS is operated by the Lutheran World Federation, which refused to give details of the crash except to say that the plane “failed to clear a tree just after taking off.”

The Hon. Mitchell Sharp, Canadian Minister of Trade and Commerce, turned the main door key in ceremonies opening the new headquarters of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada last month. The $500,000 building includes denominational offices, a printing plant, and a book store. It is located on a two-and-a-half-acre site in the Thorncliffe Park section of the city of Toronto.

Personalia

Dr. Jim Alvin Sanders was named professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary, New York. Sanders, now teaching at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, will begin at Union in the fall. He studied at Vanderbilt University and Divinity School and holds the Ph.D. from Hebrew Union College.

Dr. A. Berkeley Mickelsen accepted an invitation to join the faculty of Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, as professor of New Testament interpretation. The appointment becomes effective in September if ratified by the annual meeting in June of the Baptist General Conference, with which the seminary is affiliated.

Dr. William George, a brother of former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and an active Baptist layman, observed his 100th birthday February 23. George lives in Criccieth, Wales, and attends the local Baptist chapel each Sunday morning and evening, weather permitting.